Expectations, monetary policy, and economic stability | SBE Academics React to Nobel Prize in Economics 2026
On 12 October 2026, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford for microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilisation.
This year’s laureates in the economic sciences, Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford, have developed new macroeconomic models that have significantly improved our ability to implement effective stabilisation policy. On the basis of these models, well-timed fiscal and monetary policy measures can reduce the economy’s peaks and troughs. – Press release, NobelPrize.org
Below, you can find three opinion pieces by SBE academics who were eager to share their thoughts on this year's Nobel Prize Laureates.
Woodford, Hall and the power of words - Julian Ashwin
Central banks can influence the economy not only through what they do, but through what people expect them to do. That is why communication has become such a powerful tool of monetary policy.
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics: Understanding an Economy That Looks Ahead - Giulia Piccillo
This year's Nobel Prize in Economics recognises an extraordinary contribution to making macroeconomics a discipline in which individual decisions and aggregate outcomes can be studied together, without requiring us to regard any particular framework as the final destination.
Hall, Woodford and the defence of central bank independence - Diogo Sampaio Lima
Seeing this prize awarded is exciting as a teacher. Ideas that students meet early in their studies lead into the framework Woodford helped develop and the difficult policy questions it allows us to examine.